Customer Reviews
A great read that doesn't require an interest in economics - By: JRAE, 27 Nov 2008 
This book was bought due to a reccomendation & I don't regret it for a second, the book gets right into delivering you interesting curiosities of human behaviour & you may realise about half way through that it is beginning to effect the way you behave because of offers.
If I were to critisize Predictably Irrational for anything it would be that the last quater of the book seemed a little repeptitive to me, however that may be because of how long it took me to read it (busy timetable got in the way), but I must say I found myself bringing the book with me on journeys, which is something I rarely do in these days of audiobooks.
I have just began reading Buyology: How Everything We Believe About Why We Buy Is Wrong which approaches a similar topic yet requires a little more interest in the physiology of our brains- which is great if you have an interest (I am a Medical Student) but I would say for the average person who is interested in behaviour this is a great buy.
Thought provoking and genuinely interesting - By: J. Burling, 26 Nov 2008 
Human behaviour is & endlessly fascinating topic, & using scientific social experiments, the author outlines how irrational behaviour can be explained by rational motivations.
Each chapter is dedicated to a particular "irrational behaviour", & the problem is outlined clearly, in a way that is easy to comprehend. The author then typicallly moves on to describe & explain the set of methods & procedures that will alllow him to test his theories & preconceptions before finallly revealing the results. Lastly, the author draws conclusions from the data, & offers up suggestions as to why such behaviour was observed.
If you've ever wondered why impulse buyers react to sales & offers the way they do, this book provides invaluable insights, whilst maintaining a light-hearted feel, & is often humorous without dumbing down the matter at hand.
Didn't see that one coming... - By: R. Hill, 11 Nov 2008 
I wanted this book to be so much better than it actuallly is. I've been waiting for this book (or at least *a* book about the irrational foibles of human behaviour) to be written for years now, & having finallly been given one, it's turned out to be a bit disappointing.
Oh, don't get me wrong, it's an interesting book & well worth the read. It contains plenty of inventive experiments into human behaviour, described thorough & entertaining ways, & if that's what you're after, look no further. If you want a series of case studies into demonstrating the irrationality of human behaviour, this is exactly the book you're looking for.
If you're not presently of the belief that human beings are locked in a tragic cycle of making the same errors of judgment time & time again, you might walk away from this book feeling enlightened. If you're already quite comfortable with this notion, this book is just more ammunition for a gun you already own.
It also suffers a little for its written style. It feels more like a collection of blog entries than a cohesive book, & while an effort has been made to group the content into sensibly-categorised chapters, that's exactly what they feel like: collections of content rather than running themes. In spite of this, if you like the subject matter it will probably maintain your interest.
I may be being a little harsh on it, since most of my complaints amount to "this isn't the book I wanted it to be", but I can't help but feel that the book itself isn't the book it wants to be either.
Predictably Anecdotal - By: Mr. O. Buxton, 05 Oct 2008 Blame Malcolm Gladwell - but after Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking social psychologists of the type he featured in that book have been coming out of the woodwork to publish in the pop science market in alarming numbers figuring, reasonably, enough that there's a bit of money to be made on the side. I'm guessing royalties from articles in the International Journal of Psychology would pale in comparison.
One of the latest is Dan Ariely, whose unique selling point is a horrific accident he sustained as a student Israel which left him with burns to 70% of his body. His book does what it says on the tin, by way of explaining a number of social experiments that he & his colleagues have run in the last few years, loosely themed around the observation that we don't always act as sensibly as logic would dictate.
Which is fine - as you would expect, some of the examples are eyebrow raising - but it reallly shouldn't be news & it certainly doesn't require Dan Ariely to tell us that our liberal western societies aren't as rational as we like to think (incontrovertible proof of that, not offered in Ariel's book, being the politicians we elect & the amount of attention & money we collectively devote to cosmetics, fashion, celebrity & professional sport), especiallly as deeper epistemological examination reveals the idea of "rationality" is incoherent anyway.
But just as some anecdotes are enlightening, the implications of others are not nearly as plain or convincing as Ariel thinks they are, & some of his experiments struck me as being particularly glib, superficial & susceptible to plenty of alternative interpretations.
And what Ariel's book lacks is any further theoretical drive: OK, we re predisposed to behave in silly or odious ways - but what's your point? In what underlying way are our irrational proclivities linked? What conclusions can we draw; what can we learn; what strategies can we adopt to counteract the harmful effects of our fecklessness?
Ariely implies, but doesn't say, that some sort of regulation is required to save us. But given that it was our irrational proclivities by which we arrived at these politicians (and the political institutions through which they organise themselves) I'm not sure he leaves us any better off than when we started.
Olly Buxton
But is rational necessarily good? - By: Secret Spi, 30 Sep 2008 Dan Ariely has written an interesting & thought-provoking book on the behaviour of human beings in the field of money & commerce. There are some fascinating insights here that we already "knew" from our own behaviour but had maybe put it down to a personal oddity. Now we know, from the experiments of Dan & his colleagues, that we are not alone in our irrationality!
I like the style with which the book is written: it is extrememly readable & Professor Ariely's humanity & humour come through in large doses, which is refreshing for an academic/business book. The chapters that I found particularly interesting & pertinent were those on social & market norms (why is a gift for your neighbour helping with your house move OK but paying him is not?) & how our dishonesty increases the more steps removed we are from real money (some huge implications for our increasingly cashless society).
But...I started getting annoyed with Dan with his very liberal acceptance that as humans, we cannot be expected to have much self-control. When he starts suggesting that cars for teenagers have built-in warning devices that phone Mum or start playing classical music when the poor dears start getting out of control & breaking the speed limit, I wanted to scream "No! Teenagers shouldn't be alllowed to cruise around in cars burning up the world's natural resources until their parents judge them to be adult & responsible enough!" Ditto the comments about a credit card with various limits built in.
Finallly, I detected a rather odd implication throughout the whole book that rationality was somehow "good" or "desirable" & that irrationality was somehow associated with "poor decisions or wrong choices". I'm not sure that that is always the case. Some of the best decisons are made on the basis of intuition.
